16mm + MiniDV + Polaroids + 35mm

May 30, 2021

A long overdue blog post! I recently released a new music video in collaboration with Halla Creative for the musician, Matty Marz! And in the midst of a pandemic no less.

I first met Matty when I shot some portraits for him last December, my first indoor shoot since the beginning of the pandemic but was totally worth it. My wife Halla (of Halla Creative) and I were masked up and ready to shoot when Matty came over and we just went off on that shoot. Matty told us he was planning a music video for his upcoming single “Nu Eyes” and wanted us on the project to shoot it on film! So check out the full video below for all the punk-pop vibes you’ve been needing in your life this year!

This video was directed by Matty and assistant directed by Halla Creative and was a wild one because not only was it still a pandemic, but it would be shot in an empty gymnasium out on Long Island on 3 different formats. 16mm film. MiniDV tape and a modern digital camera. So we were spanning nearly 70 years of cinema filmmaking. And to top it off, a few Polaroids, expired and new with some 35mm tossed in there. And brought on my buddy, Jason Bullok, as digital camera op to help make this video shine.

The song was about leaving childhood baggage and having a glow-up so we figured that some school portrait-type Polaroids were in order because why not! And also shot some other 35mm stills throughout the shoot on including a few on some particularly rad rainbow film from BKIFI.

That’s it!

Director: Matty Marz

Assistant Director: Stephanie Haller of Halla Creative

DP: Nick Collingwood

Camera Operator: Jason Bullok

PA: Kyle Foxworth

HMU: Veli

Shot on Kodak Vision3 500T 16mm film

Processing by Kodak NYC

Bolex rental and 16mm scans provided by Mono No Aware

MiniDV camera provided by my mom

Nikon FM2 with Vision3 500T from Mono No Aware and rainbow film by BKIFI Film

Lexi Todd - "Madonna" // 16mm + 120 + Polaroids

October 29, 2019

Excited to share the single artwork and music video along with some press images for Lexi Todd’s newest single, “Madonna”. Lexi is a local Brooklyn musician who has a very soulful yet pop sound and I was beyond thrilled to work with her. Halla Creative did all of the concepting and design for both the single artwork as well as the music video.

The single was very much about being your own queen and ditching to the status quo, which is where the name “Madonna” came from with her genre-defining and defying music and performances. So with that in mind, Halla Creative and I set out to create a concept that would mesh both Lexi’s vintage-y, soulful sound with strong “queen”-type imagery. Stephanie Haller of Halla Creative also directed the music video.

The art for her single artwork, promo materials as well as the music video were shot on a variety of film formats including Polaroids, 16mm, 120 and 35mm. We also had shot some additional photos for press, socials, etc and were really in love with the results.

With the music video, we wanted the vibe to match the single artwork in the vintage vibe and powerful, straight-on posing. Shot on expired 16mm Kodak film with a Bolex H16, the look blended beautifully meshed with Lexi’s aesthetics. You can watch the music video below.

CREW

Music: Lexi Todd

Cinematographer: Nick Collingwood

Design/Director: Halla Creative (Stephanie Haller)

Styling: Tyler MacDonald

Processing & 2K Scans: Kodak Lab NYC

Key Grip/Gaffer: Jason Bullok

Camera Rental: MONO NO AWARE

Jazz Age Lawn Party - West Side Story - Instax

Jazz Age Lawn Party 2019 // Super 8 + 16mm + Polaroids

September 3, 2019

Back at it again with this year’s trip to the marvelous Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor’s Island in New York City. For those unaware, the Jazz Age Lawn Party is a yearly event taking place on a weekend in both in June and August where you travel out to the really beautiful island off the southern tip of Manhattan and have a day filled with jazz, champagne and dancing. Everyone dresses up in their finest 1920’s threads (some of it is genuine vintage clothing from the time period!) and enjoy a day relaxing.

I always go with the amazing Penumbra Foundation’s tintype booth they run every year. They shoot actual tintypes on large format 4x5 and 5x7 cameras. I document their booth as well as the event on Super 8 and this year I added some 16mm into the mix as well. The Super 8 was B&W Tri-X self-processed at MONO NO AWARE, a cinema arts non-profit I work with in Brooklyn, and the 16mm was color negative shot on a Bolex H16 and processed/scanned at the new Kodak NYC lab! You can see some of the footage from the day below!

A fun little snippet in there is when part of the cast of the upcoming Broadway show and Steven Spielberg directed film adaptation of West Side Story. Probably around 8 of the cast members were at the event just enjoying the day and couldn’t help but get a tintype of the crew to immortalize the day. They were a lot of fun and really loved their tintype. I later caught a portrait of two of them on some instant film which is featured at the top of this post.

Aside from documenting on motion film, I always can’t resist bringing a few still cameras to take some portraits because the outfits are always incredible. I brought along a Polaroid 110B with some Instax Wide film as well as a modified Instax Wide 300. Bringing along cameras that were at least closer to the correct time period (albeit still from the 50s technically) is a treat because they always get a lot of looks and questions as I walk around with them.

Also, while helping out the Penumbra Foundation with their booth, the tintype studio manager, Jolene Lupo, and I devised a very McGyver’d way to shoot a “mug shot” type double exposure on a single plate. Took a lot of ingenuity and several extra hands but the results were exactly as we’d hope for! This is the flipped scan since with a tintype, everything comes out inverted.

In the end, it was a hot but fun weekend to test out lots of different cameras and chat with some really inspiring artists working on their craft. And be sure to check out the previous years I’ve gone: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Upstate NY Hike with Mono No Aware // 16mm + Polaroids + 110

September 25, 2018

I obviously shoot a ton of Super 8 film as anyone who's ever visited my website or Instagram can see. So it was a real treat to find out last spring that while I was at a Mono No Aware fundraiser, that I won the raffle for a Mono No Aware workshop where a group of people would take a van loaded with cameras, film and snacks upstate to Hudson, NY and Kaaterskill Falls to shoot some 16mm! My first time!

Our first destination was the Olana State Historic Site along the Hudson River, home of Frederic Edwin Church, who was a landscape painter from the Hudson River School. There we had a brief chat with our guide and filmmaker, Fern Silva, and Steve Cossman (founder of Mono No Aware) about the history of the area both in painting as well as 16mm film. Peter Hutton was a filmmaker that shot many serene landscapes of the Hudson Valley and American cities on 16mm film and lived in the area until his passing in 2016. And so, inspired by those who came before us, we set out to create our own portraits of the landscape. We left the historic set and went over to Kaaterskill Falls to start our hike.

We were provided Bolex H16 REX5 16mm cameras, courtesy of Mono No Aware, to use and some Kodak Vision3 50D color negative film. Given the bright sunny day and gorgeous springtime colors, it was a perfect match. I also brought along my Minolta Instant Pro, which is a Polaroid Spectra camera, and a Pentax Auto 110, which I found fitting as it's a 110 camera which is actually just 16mm film cut down for still cameras. Unfortunately, that camera has some winding issues aaaand I may have dropped it at one point on the hike so the photos are cropped a little funny. But so it goes...

We hiked around with our fairly heavy Bolex's, chatted a bunch, saw some waterfalls and very cool landscapes and ate delicious food Steve had prepared. Overall, a great way to spend a day. I just received a “K-3” Krasnogorsk-3 16mm camera and I'm now very eager to shoot more of the format. I already shot a some test rolls and a little music video with it a few weeks ago. And just shot another music video this weekend! So lots to look forward to including Kodak re-releasing Ektachrome in 16mm!